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Refuting the Srebrenica Myth: An Islamist
Perspective

By: Konstantin Kilibarda

"The international press made the battle for
Srebrenica sound like Stalingrad. There is a kind of
dialectical relation between the attention of a great power
and the power of the media. It creates a distortion in our
work. What I am trying to do, without great success, is to
correct this distortion."- Comments by UN Secretary
General Boutros-Boutros Ghali at the time of Srebrenica's
capture by Bosnian Serb troops.

For all intents and purposes the "Srebrenica Massacre"
has become for many advocates of the "New Interventionism"
the sine qua non of the Western presence in the Balkans. The
notion that the Bosnian Serb Army or Vojska Republike Srpske (VRS)
organized and executed a premeditated slaughter of 7,000 unarmed
Bosnian Muslim civilian males has become a crucial element in
portraying Serbs, collectively, as genocidal aggressors.

However, one need not look too deep, or even to the Serbian
side, for another, non-CNN, perspective on this chapter of the
Balkan story. A completely different narrative emerges from
within the ranks of the Armija Bosne i Hercegovine (ARBiH), in
other words the army of the US-backed Islamist faction in Bosnia.

There exists strong evidence that the United States and the
pro-American leadership in Sarajevo conspired to manufacture the
appearance of a massacre in Srebrenica with the ultimate
objective of provoking Western intervention. A precedent for such
a scenario is well documented in the BBC's 'Death of Yugoslavia'
in which Germany is shown to have deliberately engineered the
'fall' of the town of Vukovar in order to gain support for the
neo-fascist Croatian secessionists in late 1991.

About That Odd Tangent in Mr. Annan's Srebrenica Report

In UN Secretary General Kofi Annan's recently released report
on Srebrenica an astute reader might spot a curious tangent that
is never explored by Annan. This tangent, and critical omissions
within it, hold the key to understanding the complex nature of
events that later transpired in the Drina Valley in the summer of
1995.

Describing the deliberations of the Izetbegovic regime over
the Contact Group's peace initiative, introduced aboard the HMS
Invincible in the summer of 1993, the UN Report conveys the
following information:

"115. Representatives of the Bosniac
community gathered in Sarajevo on 28 and 29 September to
vote on the peace package. A delegation of Bosniacs from
Srebrenica was transported to Sarajevo by UNPROFOR [UN
forces in Bosnia] helicopter to participate in the debate.
Prior to the meeting, the delegation met in private with
[Bosnian] President Izetbegovic, who told them that there
were Serb proposals to exchange Srebrenica and Zepa for
territories around Sarajevo. The delegation opposed the
idea, and the subject was not discussed further. Some
surviving members of the Srebrenica delegation have
stated that President Izetbegovic also told them he had
learned that a NATO intervention in Bosnia and
Herzegovina was possible, but could only occur if the
Serbs were to break into Srebrenica, killing at least 5,000
of its people."

This would normally be a rather strange assertion for a head
of government but it is not so strange coming from Alija
Izetbegovic. It is well established that Izetbegovic's own party,
the SDA, specialized in staged mortar attacks on civilians which
were then blamed on Bosnian Serb forces. This operational tactic
of the Sarajevo regime's Special Forces (AID) was designed to
gain sympathy and invite NATO intervention on behalf of the
Izetbegovic regime. This strategy has been confirmed not only by
members of the ARBiH but also by many diplomats in the region,
including chief negotiator Lord Owen and several UNPROFOR force
commanders in Bosnia, such as General Satish Nambiar of India,
General Louis Mackenzie of Canada, and General Michael Rose of
Great Britain.

A similar deceit on the scale of Srebrenica was not without
precedent. As mentioned earlier, an analogous 'sacrifice' had
already occurred in Croatia. The ruling Croatian neo-fascist HDZ
had decided, at a critical juncture in the battle over Vukovar,
not to send necessary reinforcements to the city. This was done
on the instructions of Bonn in order to gain maximum propaganda
value when, as was inevitable, superior Yugoslav forces retook
the city. A similar scenario could therefore ostensibly be
engineered between the Sarajevo regime and their handlers in
Washington in order to produce a similar propaganda effect.

By mid-1995 the Clinton Administration had already succeeded
in fulfilling major US-foreign policy objectives in the Balkans
by ending the Muslim-Croat War in Central Bosnia, by forging an
anti-Serbian, Muslim-Croat military and political alliance, by
increasing military support for these pro-Western belligerents,
and by securing UN Security Council approval for limited air-strikes
against Bosnian Serb positions.

However British, French, German and Russian foreign policy
establishments wavered on the question of full-blown NATO
intervention against the Serbs for complex domestic-political
reasons. The already firmly anti-Serbian position of the Contact
Group had to be further instilled in the general populace before
a full-blown NATO intervention could be launched against the
Serbs. Such an intervention would invariably include changing the
'facts on the ground' and would involve large-scale Western-backed
ethnic-cleansing of Serbian populations throughout Croatia and
large swaths of Bosnia. In order to sustain such a criminal
enterprise the West needed to demonize the Serbs to such an
extent that their large scale victimization would only be greeted
with, at best, a "now they're getting a taste of their own
medicine" response among the general public.

Clinton's Modest Proposal

Although Izetbegovic has denied making the above statement
about the possibility of NATO intervention in the wake of
Srebrenicas capture by the Serbian army, the allegations
have persisted in the Bosnian press. In fact there is an added
twist to the story. Thisadditional
information appeared in a June 22nd, 1998 interview with Hakija
Meholjic in the Bosnian weekly DANI. Meholjic had been
Srebrenica's chief of police. Together with Naser Oric he
spearheaded anti-Serbian pogroms in the Drina Valley. Meholjic
was present at the Sept. 28th and 29th, 1993 meetings in Sarajevo.
He was present when Serbian forces took Srebrenica in 1995.
According to Meholjic, Izetbegovic had said:

"'You know, I was offered by Clinton
in April 1993 (after the fall of Cerska and Konjevic
Polje) that the Chetnik forces enter Srebrenica, carry
out a slaughter of 5,000 Muslims, and then there will be
a military intervention.' [Meholjic then continues] Our
delegation was composed of nine people, one among us was
from Bratunac and unfortunately he is the only one not
alive now, but all the others from the delegation are
alive and can confirm this." ('DANI', June 22, 1998.
The text can be read in English at http://www.cdsp.neu.edu/info/students/marko/dani/dani2.html
and in the original Serbo-Croatian at http://www.bhdani.com/arhiva/980678/tekst278.htm
)

Thus in contrast with the UN report, it is clearly stated that
none other than US President Bill Clinton had personally
suggested that a "Srebrenica Massacre" scenario would
produce NATO intervention on behalf of the ARBiH. Hakija Meholjic
and the hardcore Srebrenica militants in the ARBiH to this day
insist that "everybody betrayed us" and are determined
to press for an inquiry.

Srebrenica's Troubled Demons

Although designated a UN protected 'safe-haven' (which was
supposed to mean complete demilitarization) in 1993, it is
abundantly clear that the Srebrenica enclave continued to be
filled with heavily armed ARBiH units through 1995. Various
intelligence reports estimate that between 1,500-5,000 ARBiH
troops were stationed in the enclave when it was captured by the
VRS on July 12, 1995.

The UN protected 'safe-haven' was used as a de facto launching
pad for ARBiH attacks on surrounding Serbian villages and
civilians. Thus the real tragedy was the UN's failure to protect
the entire civilian population of the Drina Valley by failing to
demilitarize the enclave.

The ARBiH units stationed in Srebrenica were quite militant
and uncompromising in their attitude towards Serbs, whom they
invariably viewed as "Chetnik aggressors". It is not
surprising that an alternate scenario about Srebrenica's fall
emerges from the ARBiH soldiers in the enclave itself. They were
instrumental in spreading fear in the surrounding countryside by
carrying out brutal attacks on undefended Serbian villages. For
these Bosnian Islamist nationalists the whole Srebrenica scenario
that played out in the Western media after the enclave's fall was
profoundly injurious to the reputations of these 'defenders' of
the 'Bosniac' people.

In fact in the days before the enclaves fall, key figures in
Srebrenica were called out of the enclave. Factional fighting,
confirmed by Dutch peacekeepers on the ground, erupted between
ARBiH factions over the ultimate fate of Srebrenica. The cause of
their dispute was not only whether or not to abandon the town to
the small advancing VRS forces, but also stemmed from complex
political struggles within the ARBiH and the SDA. The struggle
was a result of long-standing tensions between locally unpopular
Izetbegovic loyalists, who took into consideration the situation
in all of Bosnia, and those local leaders more narrowly committed
to 'defending' Srebrenica. What becomes clear from the picture,
however, was that Izetbegovic was willing to bargain away
Srebrenica in order to achieve full control of Sarajevo (most of
which - barring the Serbian sections - being already in the hands
of his inner-circle). Srebrenica was therefore politically
expendable to Izetbegovic, and it is increasingly evident that he
exploited it for maximum political advantage. With one deft
political maneuver he could not only eliminate popular elements
within his own party that werent beholden to his directives
but at the same time invite Western military intervention against
the hated 'Chetnik aggressor'.

In a January 18th, 1999 interview with 'DANI',
Nesib Buric, former member of an ARBiH battalion stationed in
Srebrenica, and now Deputy Mayor for Social Security of War
Veterans and Disabled Persons in Srebrenica, clearly summed-up
the perspective of the local Srebrenica faction within the ARBiH:

"I know that they are now trying to
humiliate people from Srebrenica and spread rumors that
we supposedly did not fight and were slain while running
away from Srebrenica. No one can deny that in the
Srebrenica municipality there are 2,000 buried fighters.
No one can deny that we set up a large free territory.
However, without assistance from outside we could not
hold out for long surrounded by the enemy. You can write
that I absolutely support the statement by Hakija
Meholjic that we were betrayed. Why does not someone
refute his assertions with arguments? Instead they are
using slander and saying that Hakija was like this and
like that. Hakija was among the first people in
Srebrenica to pick up a rifle and work on the
organization of the resistance. Therefore, he has the
right to speak up. Ibran Mustafic and those women do not
have the right to make lists for the Hague Tribunal. They
do not have any evidence for that. In Srebrenica, Ibran
refused to fight and lead a brigade, but turned to his
prewar flirt with politics. As far as Hakija is
concerned, you can write that every single child from
Srebrenica agrees with his statement." ( My emphasis.
English translation of the text from 'DANI' can be read
at http://www.cdsp.neu.edu/info/students/marko/dani/dani6.html
Original text in Serbo-Croatian can be read at http://www.bhdani.com/arhiva/1999/93/tekst393.htm
)

In short the Islamist veterans from Srebrenica make a three-fold
claim, that:

1) A high-level political decision was made between the
leadership in Sarajevo and the Clinton Administration on the
fate of the Srebrenica enclave,

2) That the ARBiH militants in the enclave were betrayed
by the Izetbegovic regime during the critical days in mid-June
1995 when the enclave was recaptured by the Bosnian Serb
army, and that

3) Those killed in Srebrenica were ARBiH soldiers who died
during firefights while defending their positions, not
fleeing civilians.

Any version of events that doesn't seriously consider this
perspective on Srebrenica is designed to deliberately mislead
public opinion on the dynamics of the conflict in the Balkans. By
obscuring the real facts and presenting a simple scenario about
Srebrenica, the Western foreign policy establishment and media
have designed a narrative with the sole objective of demonizing
the Serbs and justifying the continued existence of NATO and its
presence within the Balkans.

The description of events described above, however, suggests a
much more complex scenario. It becomes increasingly evident that
there was a conscious decision made in Sarajevo to abandon the
enclave's "defenders" and extract maximum propaganda
value by presenting their defeat as a massacre of helpless people.
Furthermore, the distinct possibility that the Clinton
Administration was intimately involved in this decision - and the
precedent set by Germany and Croatia in Vukovar - suggest the
profound control by Western nations over the decision and war-making
apparatus of the secessionist republics during key phases of
Yugoslavia's dismemberment. The fact that the Western media has
only played a marginal role (and even then with giant time-lags)
in exposing the foreign policy machinations of our elites further
underlines the current profound crisis of democracy in advanced
industrialized countries.

***

Further Reading

Below is an interesting group of articles on
Srebrenica, involving a dispute with 'NY Times' Srebrenica
specialist, David Rohde.

"David Rohde, 'Srebrenica and the New Justice"
by Jared Israel at http://emperors-clothes.com/articles/jared/fulltext.htm
The above is the latest in an ongoing battle with David Rohde
from the 'NY Times.' Remember Rohde? He wrote the original
Srebrenica massacre story when he was a lowly Christian Science
Monitor reporter back in 1995; in return for making loud (if
unsubstantiated) accusations against the Bosnian Serbs he landed
a perch at the 'NY Times' from which he issues Srebrenica updates
whenever NATO wishes to prepare public opinion for some new
attack on Yugoslavia.

The dispute with Rohde began when we published the article
''Why has the War Crimes Tribunal suppressed testimony about
Srebrenica?" by Max Sinclair and Jared Israel at http://emperors-clothes.com/articles/sinclair/why.htm

David Rohde sent an email answered Sinclair and Israel in an
email to Prof. Drasko Jovanovic, with whom he had been
corresponding about Srebrenica. That can be read at http://emperors-clothes.com/letters/inaccurate.htm

Jovanovic forwarded Rohde's comments to Emperor's Clothes. It
was answered by Sinclair and Israel (Go to http://emperors-clothes.com/letters/reply.htm
)

Prof. Jovanovic also sent Emperor's Clothes a short memoir
concerning his experience as a boy in Nazi occupied Yugoslavia. (Go
to http://emperors-clothes.com/letters/letterj.htm ) This is a
real experience with genocide, in contrast to the make-believe
stuff David Rohde peddles.

Rohde then took his dispute with us to the pages of the 'NY
Times,' (see http://emperors-clothes.com/articles/jared/fulltext.htm
) omitting nothing other than our actual views.

Jared Israel replied to Rohde's 'Times' piece; so did Prof.
Jovanovic. Jovanovic's answer is entitled ''Fare well Mr. Rohde.
Continue making your living by telling the Srebrenica story.'' (Go
to http://emperors-clothes.com/letters/farewell.htm )

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